"John Knight" <johnknight at usa.com> wrote in message
news:Dg3Z8.629$Fq6.52928 at news2.west.cox.net...
> "Bob LeChevalier" <lojbab at lojban.org> wrote in message
> news:jgv8ju4mpovmiqp7htdsb8gee0013a8sbf at 4ax.com...> > >There ARE tremendous classified technologies which have been developed
by
> > >PRIVATE industry under government contracts which will remain
classified
> for
> > >a long time, and which not even those companies can profit from in the
> > >private sector. So, NO, Hopper was not an "inventor" of a blasted
thing.
> > >Bob Bemer, as an employee of IBM, WAS one of the "inventors" of Cobol,
> but
> > >the team of engineers behind Cobol's development goes throughout all of
> IBM.
> > >All Hopper did was sit their on the tail end of all the REAL inventions
> and
> > >look pretty [or in her case, real ugly].
> >
> > http://www.cs.yale.edu/homes/tap/Files/hopper-story.html> > http://cispom.boisestate.edu/cis221emaxson/hophtm.htm> > each give a detailed history of Hopper's life and contributions to the
> > industry. They back up with details what is meant when we say that she
> > invented the compiler (1949) and COBOL (1959).
> >
>>> An intelligent woman would submit to her husband. Obviously, this didn't
> happen. The jews were already spewing out their feminist lies by 1943, and
> Hopper undoubtedly was deceived by them enough that her marriage was
> dissolved. Thus, her lineage subsequently was terminated and became
extinct,
> all because of the jew lie of "career" over "children." You feminists will
> learn twice the Laws of Yahweh. In your wretched, barren old age, you will
> look back at the mistake you made. Again, when you are incarcerated by
> Lucifer for your selfish transgressions against God.
Now you're bringing religion into this argument?
> Anyone who thinks the DOD, or any other government agency, has ever
> "invented" anything really, really has not a clue about how grossly
> inefficient and stupid government employees are, and how mixed up the
> government is. You simply cannot operate under almost 4 decades of
> affirmative action and expect to retain top employees, nor can you expect
> advanced development to come out of government facilities.
The DoD created ADA. Another programming language.
>http://cobolforgcc.sourceforge.net/cobol_2.html> 2. COBOL Overview
> Acknowledgement
> COBOL Purpose
> COBOL Good Points
> COBOL Bad Points
> 2.1 Use of Material from the COBOL Standard
> The following is reproduced from the COBOL Standard:
>> Acknowledgment
>> Any organization interested in reproducing the COBOL standard and
> specifications in whole or in part, using ideas from this document as the
> basis for an instruction manual or for any other purpose, is free to do
so.
> However, all such organizations are requested to reproduce the following
> acknowledgment paragraphs in their entirety as part of the preface to any
> such publication:
>> COBOL is an industry language and is not the property of any company or
> group of companies, or of any organization or group of organizations. No
> warranty, expressed or implied, is made by any contributor or by the
CODASYL
> COBOL Committee as to the accuracy and functioning of the programming
system
> and language. Moreover, no responsibility is assumed by any contributor,
or
> by the committee, in connection therewith.
>> The authors and copyright holders of the copyrighted materials used herein
>> FLOW-MATIC (trademark of Sperry Rand Corporation),
> Programming for the UNIVAC (R) I and II, Data Automation Systems
copyrighted
> 1958, 1959, by Sperry Rand Corporation;
> IBM Commercial Translator Form No. F28-8013, copyrighted 1959 by IBM;
> FACT, DSI 27A5260-2760, copyrighted 1960 by Minneapolis-Honeywell
> have specifically authorized the use of this material, in whole or in
part,
> in the COBOL specifications. Such authorization extends to the
reproduction
> and use of COBOL specifications in programming manuals or similar
> publications.
>> 2.2 Purpose of COBOL
> COBOL was a significant advance in the history of computer science,
because
> it opened up programming for many people who found assembler tedious or
> difficult or both, and FORTRAN, ALGOL, LISP and kindred languages
generally
> unappealing. That is, people who were neither mathematicians nor computer
> scientists.
>> It is particularly focussed on the writing of business logic and rules and
> to this end has very good control over numerical calculations and the
> associated rounding, as is needed for financial calculations.
>> Here is a quote from one of the inventors of COBOL (Jean Sammet, quoted in
> "The Psychology of Computer Programmming" by Gerald M Weinberg):
>> "The users for who COBOL was designed were actually two subclasses of
those
> people concerned with business data processing problems. One is the
> relatively inexperienced programmer for whom the naturalness of COBOL
would
> be an asset, while the other type of user would be essentially anybody who
> had not written the program initially. In other words, the readibility of
> COBOL programs would provide documentation to all who might wish to
examine
> the programs, including the supervisory or management personnel. Little
> attempt was made to cater for professional programmers."
>> In fact of course almost all COBOL code is written by professional
> programmers.
>> 2.3 What's Good About COBOL?
> More people can write COBOL than C/++. There is more COBOL code than
> probably any other language.
This is not true at all. C/C++ combined is far more popular than COBOL.
Actually, there are many languages that are more popular than COBOL
(presently).
I'd go as far to say that Visual Basic is more popular, as well as Perl and
Java.
> Indeed there may be more COBOL code in existence than any other language.
> This means that much of the Intellectual Property of business is embedded
in
> COBOL programs.
This is horribly outdated. I'm fairly certain that the 10 largest software
products in the world are probably all written in C/C++. Additionally, I
doubt that more than 1% of PC software is written in COBOL. I'm pretty sure
that Video Game systems use 0 COBOL as well.
The amount of software written for the IBM personal computer dwarfs that of
Mainframes by several orders of magnitude.
Cite more recent sources next time. History changes as we uncover more
details.
